Piracy now a reality on the PS Vita?

Ten Days ago, the HENkaku hack was released on PS Vita firmware 3.60, opening the doors of homebrews and emulators for the PS Vita. Today, a PS Vita pirated game was released on the internet, that can be played on hacked consoles.

disclaimer: For obvious reasons, we do not share or disclose any link to the sources of this leak here. The information however is pouring everywhere on the web as I type this so I have no doubt that the people looking to confirm this can do so very easily *. I apologize to the people who shared this information with me and whom I cannot credit. Thanks for your understanding.

The video game in question, Adventure Time, the Secret of the nameless kingdom, is a Vita game from 2014.

Are the doors of piracy now fully open on the PS Vita?

Conveniently distributed in a .vpk package (the same format used for HENkaku homebrews), the game cannot be installed directly with molecularShell (the default package installation tool distributed with HENkaku) due to its size, but recently released VitaShell 0.7 apparently does the trick with big files. We were able to confirm the game runs on a retail Vita 3.60 with HENkaku, and is indeed a real PS Vita game.

Allegedly, the game was dumped from a Vita Devkit and stripped of its DRMs. The question that is unanswered here is if someone had access to a DRM free copy of the game, or if some people actually managed to remove the DRMs from a commercial game.

If the latter, this means piracy on PS vita is now a possibility, as it will not take long for warez groups to figure out the backup dumping/drm-stripping process. However, if this was just a lucky person with access to a development version of the game, then the PS Vita is still safe.

* This goes without saying, but beyond being illegal in most countries, pirating a game on the PS Vita could lead you to additional trouble: a potential ban from the PSN, or even worse: there’s no guarantee the game doesn’t ship with malware. As a reminder, your PSN Credentials are available in plaintext on the device’s registry.

Wololo, great fan of you here and thanks for all your efforts… —————————— Let me put some general thoughts: 1. There will always be people, who will buy games and people who will pirate, just because… (even if the games are 0,99) 2. Devs are attracted by sales numbers, not by console features. 3. The sales are in direct relation to aftermarket sales (this is marketing thesis, not gaming one) 4. If you can’t push the market, you push the aftermarket. 5. Most successful consoles (ever) are the ones, “successfully hackable” (wii, psp, 3ds…) 6. Because of 1, I (as console manufacturer) know, that from the second group of ppl will have no profit, but still it will drive my sales numbers. 7. Because of 6, I (as console manufacturer) can control my sales the way not to scare devs away and still keep the aftermarket by controling the hackability of my console. Here we have one example with Nintendo and WiiU – even with the newest firm you easily can play “backups” and Nintendo is aware of that. But… sales figures are dissaster and “we’re gonna play dead” and not patch it for months already. 3DS as sales is different story and we’re gonna drop security update for every single *hax…. 8. We already have study, that most people, who pirate are ready to pay more for games than regular gamers and they do… 9. To be able to “hack” and “play backups” you need at least some intermediate tech knowledge, which takes casual gamers who update their consoles asap away from the second group. Here to the question: Why we still bother with this “piracy is bad, and we don’t like it” stuff when it is clearly not bad even for The Big Three?

“Why we still bother with this “piracy is bad, and we don’t like it” stuff when it is clearly not bad even for The Big Three?”

Because of our twisted two faced morals and our envy towards ppl that can obtain the same for “free” due to their knowledge and or ability.

All the “pircay is bad” blah blah is nonesense, it actually pushes device sales and in the long run even software sales.

For example, Henkaku is actually motivating me to get a vita AGAIN (because of possible backup loading). I sold both of my vitas I had, in 2013, including all the equipment. So I need another vita including memory card and what not else.

As you pointed out, devices without any piracy or hackability are flops, THEY DON’T MAKE PPL TURN THEIR HEADS. Example: My reason for getting a pc way back in 2001 was because I could play copied games my brother gave me. Since then I have (d)evolved from an excessive pirate to a steam / gog follower that even BUYS GAMES ON LAUNCH OR PREORDERS THEM!!!w1t1f1 Another example: My reason for getting a wii, because at a friends place I saw the homebrew loader and the glory of usb loading… insta bought a wii and homebrew’ed it, shoved it full with games… never played most of them.

In places like Brazil, a normal game costs like $150 and a recent release as much as $200. Taxes do they part, but most of the costs come from the seller. I, myself, pirated games, but always buy them on sales (they go down to as much as $30.. So, piracy for many places is a necessity, and aftermarket still makes me buy.. =)

For anyone saying that this isn’t a pirated game: By downloading and installing this free VPK, and playing it on your system, it is piracy. Because it is a game that you are supposed to pay for through the PSN store, getting it for free through other means is the definition of piracy. So yes, it is a pirated Vita backup

i know this, but ppl were commenting that this is not a vita backup. And it most certainly is. I agree that this game was a special case, but just because it was easier to get it to work doesn’t mean it’s not pirated. That’s all i was saying. On a side note, maybe by comparing this unreleased, unsecured game with a released official one can help hackers figure out the missing pieces. But i dunno, just my two cents

I just want to be able to play my purchased PSP and PSOne games on my Vita that Sony won’t let the Vita play. Has a way been found where I can take the game files I downloaded with TN-V using the PSN Store and copy them to the PSTV or Vita and have the run from the Vita menu, aka game Bubbles?

Speaking of people adding malicious code to the pirated Vita games, the same has been done with pirated iOS and Android apps or they add ads to the program. As a rule of thumb, I don’t download pirated stuff as you never know what has been added even though I use a Mac.

I can perfectly understand people wanting to pirate a game to see if they like before buying it.

The issue is that piracy is illegal in most countries. If this site condoned and promoted piracy it would get shut down. There is a big difference between “backups” and “pirated copies”. A “backup” is an iso/rom of a game you have purchased and have the physical cartridge/disc for and have dumped it yourself.

Act as against piracy as you want, 90% of what’s available for henkaku is emulators… which people use to play pirated games. Most of your feed is news about this or that emulator. You only care if the vita games are pirated i guess, so this really couldn’t be a “I’m against that” kind of thing.

Other than piracy we have Snake, which you can play on an old Nokia, it’s been pretty moot ever since the 90’s, and file managers / ftp. VHBL takes forever to load, as do the other PSP homebrew, it’s better to run those on a PSP or PSP Go.

Um, might wanna point out that this was an UNRELEASED game dumped from a devkit. Chances are this game never had DRM to begin with, and if it did I would seriously question why. I don’t think this means literally anything for Vita’s piracy development. We didn’t crack some sort of code, we literally just installed something that was meant to be installed like that in the first place.

so damn sad. Finally get a native Vita platform to run all the great content the community has been developing over the years (jees, it’s been years already) and the day after someone just poops on it. Why take it to piracy? There’s sooo many other things to do on a vita than to pirate games. I finally get my prayer answered of getting some homebrews on the vita ( i couldnt abide the rejuvinate solution-waaaay too much upkeep for my likes), and we getta joker that undermines the integrity of what everyone is wanting to do here. Running programs on hardware that didnt get the ok from the manufacturer is controversial, but actually actually uploading someone else’s game to the internet is just wrong. The community needs to redouble their efforts in the homebrew and show these peeps we dont need their pirated games to do what we want on our vita’s. We just need to come together and put out the best stuff.

[…] seen a couple warez games surface on the PS Vita scene since Henkaku has been released. Adventure time, which had been confirmed to be a DRM-free developer leak (and as such did not involve any method […]

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